Sunday, 5 March 2017

Revised Sgt Pepper album?

According to The Sunday Times, a New edition of Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band is planned for release this year, with the single tracks "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" added.

The newspaper says that "The 50th anniversary of the release of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band this June will be marked with a worldwide re-release — and for fans it will mean at last hearing the album as the band had intended it to sound".

According to the newspaper's sources, the anniversary relaunch on June 1 will reinstate the two tracks, which George Martin agreed to release as a single several months before the album was in the shops. The Sunday Times quotes Paul McCartney:"We were then moving away from screaming girls’ gigs where no one could hear anything in the concert halls any more and were working on Sgt Pepper. John wrote this absolutely amazing song, Strawberry Fields Forever, for the new album and I was frankly a bit jealous, so I went home and wrote Penny Lane. It worked and we wanted them as the main tracks on Sgt Pepper."

The Sunday Times also writes that "Although details of the re-release are being kept secret, it is understood that all parties involved have co-operated fully, including McCartney, Ringo Starr and Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison".

We must add that as far as we're concerned, we believe that a 50th Anniversary re-release of the "Sgt. Pepper" album should do more than just add the Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever single to the album's lineup, and we do think that a far grander scheme is in the works.

It implies "Pepper" will be as it might have been, had Capitol not pulled Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane out of contention early in the year. However, they can't simply tag them on as bonus tracks and think that's what would have happened at the time. Other songs would have had to give way - and what about the running order? I could picture Strawberry Fields closing side 1 and Penny Lane opening side 2, but then what would have become of Within You Without You, and where would Mr Kite appear?

I hope they leave it alone and maybe release it as a stereo / mono set with an extra disc of singles (Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lane with the original 45 rpm picture sleeve)A hard cover booklet of recording details and photo sessions would be great. But it's Sgt Pepper - leave it alone!!

A couple of things come to mind.1) Since these songs were siphoned off as a single release before the project was well under way, their inclusion and the running order of the album would have to be different.2) Stereo was still a bit of a novelty and certainly not their primary focus, so the mono version of the album was the only version that really mattered to them at the time.

Many fans prefer the sound and mix of the mono release as it is very different from the stereo.

I saw something like this coming a while back, but I didn't think it would be so soon. I thought by 2067, the album would be remembered but it would be quite different by then. It would be more a celebration of the band and of the era. I did a playlist in iTunes. I called it Sgt Pepper Reprise. Tracks were:

Overall this has the potential to be good news. I, like many fans, have multiple LP and cd copies of this album, so it has to offer something new in order for me to buy yet another copy. Good points about simply adding tracks: we can all create our own versions by adding songs or changing the running order, so again something more is needed. The 2009 remasters were a disappointment given how much better the Yellow Sub soundtrack sounded with the remixes, and that is 18 years ago now. The same is true of LIB Naked. What we need is a fundamental remix to gain an idea of much better / different Sgt P might sound. We've all read about the limitations of the 4 track machines and how they had to 'bounce down' several tapes onto one track to make it work. If the original tapes have been kept there could be a huge gain in fidelity if digitally mastered backing tapes were used to create a new mix. And this would invalidate the stereo / mono debate because it would be a new version with possibly a new running order. For me the Yellow Sub soundtrack was a revelation and imo all the albums need a remix...

I've been wondering for a while now what if ANYTHING they would release to commemorate if not the greatest LP of all time at least one of them. I've thrown the challenge out to friends of mine to make a version of SPLHCB with both Penny Lane & Strawberry Fields included. However, the rules were basically the Beatles own rules. You would still need to have a song for Ringo, a song of George's and there would be no more than the normal 14 songs. With that in mind it is pretty difficult to find a spot for BOTH of these tracks on the record and where would they go. If they are just going to throw these 2 masterpieces onto another masterpiece without much thought i would agree that i'm not in. I'm hoping that there is some thought put into this and that they do a proper box with outtakes, alternate versions, Carnival of Light, a 5.1 Surround mix & both Mono & Stereo mixes as well as a new book - "50 Years Ago Today" or something less obvious. Since we all know they never get it right we can at least keep dreaming for another 3 months. Fingers crossed

This is exactly what i was thinking/suggesting as well!! It only makes complete sense to have Carnival of Light, SFForever without the fade, Penny Lane with the original ending, maybe Only a Northern Song in MONO of course as a bonus disc...

I know that Giles Martin is now the 'official' Beatles man, but the people that mixed the Yellow Submarine Songtrack should do the same to Pepper and other 67 output... Also, more of Michael Cooper's photos in high quality from the cover session would be great (like the one seen in the 2017 calendar). Great that Pepper is being commemorated, but of course this will mean no Let It Be for yet another year...

And how about the full 'It's All Too Much' with added film verse and extended coda?...And would also love to hear a 'Songtrack' treatment of 'I Am The Walrus'.

Sgt. Peppers as it should sound it's in mono. That's how the Beatles decided to go for and designed it for. Whatever new remixes they might get it's not going to be done with same state of mind as it was 50 years ago. I don't understand the reasoning behind remixes, that's how the artist intended or is it the fact that they are starting to sound old?

George Martin and the Beatles didn't get stereo. They thought it was for the audiophiles sitting in their easy chairs, listening for the separation on instruments and vocals. They didn't see how it was meant for pop music. This is perhaps the one instance where they were wrong.

That said, Sgt Pepper was mixed pretty good and still sounds great in the stereo mix from '67.

I hope they finally release the full versions of the SFF tracks that were issued in abridged form on Anthology. Plus other demos, takes etc of SFF, they could easily fillup a disc or few showing the full story of this song's development!

Hi John SanchezIf you don't understand the reasoning behind the call for remixes, then rather than write a lengthy post I will just ask you to compare 'It's all to much' from the original Yellow Sub album with the 1999 songtrack album. Or compare 'Hey Bulldog'.

As for the mono argument: I have an original pre-87 mono vinyl album and a post 2009 cd remastered release. Different, sure; better, not so sure, but no one is suggesting these should disappear. The only thing that will make me buy another copy of this album is either a new mix and /or new tracks. The latter could be a bonus disc or it could be a radical new running order. It has to offer something new or what is the point?

If there indeed is a re-release, it would have to be much more than just adding two songs to the running order. Anybody can do that in this day and age. I would imagine some deluxe package is being bandied about. Hoping Carnival of Light and other studio outtakes see the light of day here, or else why bother?

Would be ace if there was also a remix 'songtrack' style project for The Stones 60s output... Somebody posted a stereo remix of 'Have You Seen Your Mother....?' onto Youtube and it sounded fantastic. But ABKCO tends to sit on their Stones legacy/goldmine most of the time...

Wonder if the alternate footage from Knole Park and the Saville Theatre (as seen on the Revolver Records Youtube channel) will possibly be used for 'new' promos for the upcoming Pepper release?

I think the remaining members of The Quarrymen should re-record the entire album and the results should be released as a bonus disc. Then we would finally hear the album as it would have sounded if Paul, George and Ringo never joined The Beatles and John had a cold and was too sick to record.

CCC's Cracked Pepper is also worth checking out... Ten years since it was put out, but it can still be found. It's a bootleg/mashup album with every track on Pepper being done. The ELO 'A Day In The Life' and Bowie with The Beatles (the title track) are highlights.

A great mix of a Pepper track here. It's quite 10cc and even 'With A Little Luck' era Wings in style. Captures the loneliness of Paul's lyrics, which are sometimes overlooked because of the original song's 'knees-up' backing track....

Georgio Herrison Avenue sonically pschyed Northern Town demo into astral plane and it was downloaded from akashic field nearly fifty lite years later by Bob Log III as the song Riverside. HaHaHeeHeeHooHoo. Wait, so if you goto YouTube and search Bob Log III Riverside and play it, goto settings and play at .75 speed and the guitarz are bent Revolver breaks. lamf.

If SFF and PL are incorporated into the album's running order, it seems to me the rub will be where to place them. I don't imagine a running order had been planned with them included since thy were pulled for a single fairly early in the process

Follow by Email

Twitter

Facebook

Posters etc

About the awful

Roger Stormo

About Us

This website is all about The Beatles and the individual members of The Beatles. It is kept by Roger Stormo, who has been associated with the Norwegian Beatles fan club, "Norwegian Wood", since 1980.
Feel free to quote from the site, but please give me credit and a link back to the original item.
This is not a news site per se, but if we hear about something that has yet to be reported by other Beatles news services, we tend to write about it. Apart from that, we will write stuff about the Beatles on an irregular basis at the whim of the author. A lot of our readers arrive at specific articles from internet searches or references to this site from forums and other Beatles sites. If you did, we encourage you to click here to access the main page, and also to indulge in our archives - you may find other posts that are interesting. You may also subscribe to news from the site and have each new issue delivered to your rss feed reader.

This is not a begging letter... but feel free to support me by donating money! It'll keep me in business... Or just buy a t-shirt! Or take a look at my Amazon wish list...
If you have Beatles related product to push, feel free to send us a copy, the address is:
Roger Stormo
Baglergata 21B
NO-2004 Lillestrøm
NORWAY
email: roger.stormo@gmail.com
We can't promise that your product will be featured on the site, but it stands a better chance than the ones we don't get...